There are many more infected and dead in New York and New Jersey than the rest of the country. The high population density might account for some of it, but there are other high-density urban areas that were not as severely affected. Did New York just not enforce social distancing soon enough?
I have been thinking about this all day. Lots of possibilities. The high density of New York might have just given us a crash course on what to look forward to. Hopefully they will identify some extenuating circumstances that may be contributing to this high death toll. My first suspicion would be a combination of obesity and an aging population. It wouldn’t take too much over the national average to throw those numbers way up.
What led you to think that New Yorkers are more obese or older than the national average? I’m puzzled - it doesn’t seem at all intuitive to me. (And indeed it’s quite wrong - significantly less obese, and around equal to the national average for age).
two words: transportation and occupation.
NYC is a hub for international travel, particularly from Europe. So, they prob had the virus circulating for weeks before anyone really took notice.
The NYC metropolitan area RELIES on public transportation, which puts lots of people in very close proximity with each other.
The Bronx and Queens (the hotspots within the hotspot) are predominantly blue collar. Many dont have the luxury of working from home. and many more are so dependent on their paycheck that they are more likely to go to work with the sniffles, or even full blown flu.
just mho…
As long as there were no shortages of hospital beds, ICU, and ventilators - they did fine - which looks like it was the case.
There is a possibility that the strain of the virus on the East Coast is different from the strain on the West Coast, and that may account for the difference in impact. A lot more research is necessary, but I think that this is intriguing and worth following up.
Don’t trust the numbers.
New York tested more aggressively than any other state in the nation. Their story is simply more complete than the rest of the states.
For comparison, it’s worth noting that Los Angeles County started testing asymptomatic persons. The study shows that anywhere from 21-55% more people are/were infected (County of Los Angeles Public Health Department) than first was known.
We will never have a complete picture until testing becomes accurate and widely available.
Obviously more populated areas will be more stricken than rural ones due to human density and the extremely infectious nature of this virus.
Nothing led me to believe that I said it would be my first suspicion. An extra 300,000 seniors over national averages with some kind of condition could throw the figures way up. I come from an I Italian family from New York and I know a lot of my Aunts and uncles were pretty chunky. So that is where I got my " Suspicion"
Your definition of “fine” is different than mine. 20,000 people dead is not fine!
One would imagine that R[sub]0[/sub] was intrinsically higher than in say LA, simply due to the tighter living conditions. At the start, when things are exploding with a high R, delay in lockdown has a disproportionate effect, a doubling at the start is still a doubling you are living with well into lockdown. And that is a doubling of as yet undetected infections that won’t become apparent in the deaths, or new infections, for weeks to come. When the daily increase is 1.35 only one or two days delay is going to have significant knock-on effects. Three or fours days and things start to become grim.
Some breakdown on the demographics will probably shed further light on matters. Ethnicity clearly has some bearing, which, as Dr John Campbell is wont to highlight, could be as simple as variations in immune capability due to vitamin D deficiency. Lots here that won’t be understood for quite some time.
Lots of things.
Manhattan residents are never six feet from other people except in their own apartments, and not always even then. People employed in Manhattan but commuting from other boroughs or Long Island or Westchester (or Connecticut or Pennsylvania or New Jersey) aren’t even six inches from other people. On a good day you manage to not have your neighbor’s umbrella up your left nostril.
We have a ludicrous density of people per square foot in downtown New York City during business hours. There’s nowhere else like it.
As Aspenglow points out, testing was more comprehensive from the start.
February was an exercise in realizing things in stages. Every two to three days, what had seemed like a reasonable and responsible reaction to the situation was modified: “If you have symptoms don’t come in to work. No one needs to wear masks, don’t buy up all the masks, our medical people need them.” / “Those who can work from home should do so. Employers with nonessential workers should strongly consider telling their employees to stay home” / “Please stay six feet away from others. Employers in professions not designated as essential, please reduce the density of your employees by 50%” / “On second thought please reduce the density of your employees so that no more than 25% are present at the same time in the same space. And please consider making simple masks. And stay home if you can”. / “Everybody stay home. Stay home. Stay the fuck home. If you can’t stay home, wear a mask.”
These numbers are coming up in a few places, but there has been some significant doubt voiced about them as well. Use of an unverified, rushed to use, serology test is an issue. Especially when the test’s actual specificity capability can have a very unfortunate effect on the numbers. We are trying to estimate a small fraction of the populace, and false positives can overwhelm the real numbers. Even a small change is specificity can wreck the statistics. Would be nice if the numbers held up, but caution seems advisable.
Your link actually states that 28 to 55 times more people may have been infected than the number of people with confirmed tests. This is larger than an order of magnitude more people.
If you look at the death per million population rather than infection rates which are meaningless at this point I think we get a better perspective.
I suspect that’s the reason for the wild swing between 28 to 55 times more people may have been infected, as pointed out by robby. I agree these numbers are far from validated, but I think the larger point stands, that the disparity between what New York is experiencing and what the rest of the country is or soon will be experiencing is not that different.
You’re correct. Thanks for the assist.
We can probably all agree it’s a big-ass difference between what’s being officially reported and what these additional tests reveal. Even with some number of false positives, we’re not going to discover that fewer people are infected in the Los Angeles area than what the official numbers say. It’s likely a lot more than we know at present.
I’m seeing the same thing play out in my own state. Oregon’s official numbers say we have only 2,002 positive cases at this point. Pretty good, until you understand we’ve only tested a hair over 41,000 people in a state with a population of 4.5 million.
New York City and Northern New Jersey are a bitches brew for an epidemic like this:
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It’s the most crowded area in the United States with over 15 million people living within a 75 mile radius.
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This area has high amounts of poverty and overcrowding, making it difficult to social distance and get proper health care. Also burdening the Poor many of the lowest paying jobs are the ones where social distancing is the most difficult.
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There are also three international airports all within 15 miles of each other, so back in January, February and March countless international passengers from infected countries descended on the area without screening or quarantines.
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Many New Jersey residents commute to New York City, bringing the virus back to their communities in New Jersey.
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In addition to the above points, the NY Times had a piece on the Hasidic community being hit hard. Another viral hot point to the above.
This guy talks about research that indicates that all the really big outbreaks were in places/at times when humidity was between 4.5 and 5.5 g/kg. He also mentions that it is usually in temperatures between 5 °C and 11 °C and there are often not super-spreader people, but rather super-spreader events. Events where a lot of people come together inside in close proximity. But he says the most important thing is humidity.
He says about the difference between NY and SF: NY had 45 days out of the 50 days they looked at, where the humidity was optimal for the virus to spread. SF had 19 days out of the same 50 within the range of humidity.
He’s a fairly well-known social geographer and pollster in the Netherlands, but also a bit of a loon at times and definitely not always right. I can’t evaluate his claims but maybe it partially explains why the spread in New York went the way it did. The temperature and humidity where just right + the city is pretty much a giant super-spreader event all the time.
This research paper [web.mit], submitted by a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research, claims it was mainly the subways. Haven’t read all of it, but he tracks the changes in infection hot spots when subway routes changed (using subway maps). The buses seem to have played a major role as well.
Here’s an article [The Intercept] explaining how infection rates followed economic (and racial) boundaries very closely. It appears blacks and Hispanics in NYC were infected at twice the rate of whites. The included charts show a strong correlation between income and infection rates when separated by zip code. This probably supports the theory that public transportation was a main source of transmission, since (I assume) wealthier folks are less likely to use it.
We do not yet know if New York got hit harder than other parts of the country because the disease has not run it’s course yet. NYC got hit early because of the worldly nature of the city. Other parts of the country are still on the exponentially rising part of the death curve, while it looks like New York might have finally flattened.
I wish World-o-meter made charts for each individual state like they do for each country. It would give a clearer picture of where the states are in their battle with the virus.